64 The Universe and Life 



existence of such complex, efficiently working ar- 

 rangements as are found in the world, and particu- 

 larly in living organisms, demands, we are told, the 

 previous existence of a maker, a contriver. This con- 

 triver, since he plans and produces the contrivances, 

 includes beforehand in some sense all that later ap- 

 pears in the contrivance ; includes these and more. He 

 includes them perhaps in concept, in thought ; but the 

 essence of the argument is that he does include them. 



Thus the argument is that in order to account for 

 the existence of the visible working contrivance, we 

 must assume the previous existence of a still more 

 perfect contrivance; one of the second degree, as it 

 were. If the argument is vahd, we must again assume 

 a further contriver, one of the third degree, in order 

 to account for the existence of this one of the second 

 degree, which was assumed in order to account for 

 the visible one of the first degree. But this leaves us 

 just where we were: we must then assume a contriver 

 of the fourth degree for the one of the third degree 

 and so on ad infinitum. In other words, the argument 

 from contrivance to contriver gets one nowhere; it 

 leaves the origin of things just where it was. It is 

 better to take the phenomena that are presented to 

 us, dealing with these, formulating them as they are 

 presented to us, rather than to embark upon a never- 

 ending recession of concepts of successive degrees of 

 perfection one behind the other, which is the consist- 

 ent outgrowth of the argument from contrivance. 



What the course of evolution presents to us is es- 

 sentially a picture of the method by which complex, 



